Old yet new – SFC as an interesting technique for natural products analysis


Markus Ganzera, Pharmacy, Pharmacognocy, University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria (markus.ganzera@uibk.ac.at)

The supercritical stage is reached above the critical temperature and pressure of a substance, the resulting fluid shows liquid like density and the viscosity of a gas. It has high solvating power but creates less backpressure, rendering it to an ideal mobile phase for chromatography. Since first reports in the 1960´s Supercritical Fluid Chromatography (SFC) has evolved dramatically, and today rugged instruments are available, together with a variety of HPLC-type stationary phases and detectors [1].

The potential of SFC for natural products analysis is highlighted in this presentation. Based on successfully conducted studies in our laboratory it will be shown that the separation of diverse compound classes is possible with high speed, separation efficiency and ease. After a short introduction to the technique itself, SFC applications describing the analysis of coumarins in Angelica dahurica [2], lactones in kava-kava [3], and alkaloids in Cinchona bark [4] will indicate the benefits of this increasingly popular technique. Exemplarily, the latter was possible using an Acquity UPC2 Torus DEA 1.7 µm column, with a mobile phase comprising CO2, acetonitrile, methanol and diethylamine. Method validation confirmed that the procedure is selective, accurate (recovery rates from 97.2% to 103.7%), precise (intra-day ≤ 2.2%, inter-day ≤ 3.0%) and linear (R2 ≥ 0.999); at 275 nm the observed detection limits were always below 2.5 µg/ml. In terms of technical performance there are no differences to state of the art techniques like UPLC; however, the use of an environmental friendly, “green” mobile phase renders SFC unique and preferable actually.



Abstract Reference:

[1] Hartmann A. et al., Planta Med. 2015, 81, 1570-1581.

[2] Pfeifer I. et al., J. Pharm. Biomed. Anal. 2016, 129, 246-251.

[3] Murauer A. and Ganzera M., Planta Med. 2017, 83, 1053-1057.

[4] Murauer A. and Ganzera M., J. Chromatogr. A 2018, 1554, 117-122.

Personal Biography:

Dr. Ganzera studied pharmacy at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, where he also obtained his PhD in 1997. Thereafter he was more than 3 years post-doc and research scientist at the National Center for Natural Products Research at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, USA, interrupted by a 6 month stay at the Hoechst Rousell Vet. company, Vienna, Austria. In 2002 he returned to the University of Innsbruck, where he finished his habilitation in Pharmacognosy 2006 and was appointed to Associate Professor in 2012. He spent research internships at the Food and Drug Administration (College Park, USA), The Lawrence Berkeley Lab (Berkeley, USA) and at the University of Buffalo (Buffalo, USA).

His main research interest is the analysis of natural products by conventional (HPLC, LC-MS, GC) as well as less common (CE, CE-MS, CEC, SFC) techniques, including method development, validation and application to (medicinal) plants and products thereof. He has authored more than 125 scientific papers in international journals, and since 2019 he is editor of Journal of Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Analysis.

 

 

Organized & Produced by:

pba2019.org

POB 4043, Ness Ziona 70400, Israel
Tel.: +972-8-931-3070, Fax: +972-8-931-3071
Site: www.bioforum.co.il,
E-mail: bioforum@bioforum.co.il